Coral reef islands have a self-sustaining mechanism that expands and maintains the islands through the deposition of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) by marine organisms. However, the human societies established on such low-lying coral reef islands are vulnerable to rapid sea-level rises. Enhancing the self-sustaining mechanism of coral reefs will become one of the required sustainable countermeasures against sea-level rise. We examined the feasibility of mass culturing the large benthic foraminifera Baculogypsina sphaerulata, which is known as “living sand.” We developed a rearing system with the key components of an artificial lawn as a habitat and a stirring device to create vertical water currents. Batches of B. sphaerulata in two different size groups were reared to examine size growth and reproduction under the culture conditions. All culture batches reproduced asexually following generations over 6 months in culture. The small-sized group exhibited steady growth, whereas the large-sized group underwent a reduction in mean size because large individuals (> 1.5 mm2) died off. Similar traits of size structure between the culture batches and natural populations indicate that our culturing conditions can successfully reproduce environments similar to the habitat of this species. Reproduction, consistent size growth, and size structure similar to the natural population indicate that the examined rearing system is viable for culturing Foraminifera at a large scale.

Add new comment

Filtered HTML

Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Each email address will be obfuscated in a human readable fashion or, if JavaScript is enabled, replaced with a spam resistent clickable link. Email addresses will get the default web form unless specified. If replacement text (a persons name) is required a webform is also required. Separate each part with the "|" pipe symbol. Replace spaces in names with "_".

Plain text

No HTML tags allowed.

Each email address will be obfuscated in a human readable fashion or, if JavaScript is enabled, replaced with a spam resistent clickable link. Email addresses will get the default web form unless specified. If replacement text (a persons name) is required a webform is also required. Separate each part with the "|" pipe symbol. Replace spaces in names with "_".

CAPTCHA

This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

Share your research in MarXiv: the free research repository for the ocean and marine-climate sciences

Ocean managers, policymakers, and NGOs routinely face barriers to scientific knowledge: they simply can't afford costly subscriptions to traditional academic journals. Studies have found that these financial barriers result in less primary science being used in on-the-ground environmental management plans.

MarXiv offers a way to increase access to pay-walled academic literature in a legal manner. An author who retains copyright on their submitted manuscript, known colloquially as a preprint, may upload the manuscript to MarXiv. Anyone may then download and read the preprint free of charge, legally, forever. No more time wasted begging the author for a copy, and no need to "pirate" the research in a not-so-legal manner.

But MarXiv isn't just for preprints! You can deposit your group's technical reports and Open Access publications, as well. Deposit your report in MarXiv to get a free DOI, a long-term storage solution, and ensure your work is indexed in Google Scholar.